Beware new drug epidemic: Flakka

Flakka, which comes in a crystal rock form, can be snorted, smoked or injected. Its effects can turn people into violent zombies with super-human strength. Its users are starting to flood local hospitals, jails and morgues.

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Let this be a warning. Warn your children, too.

Early numbers suggest flakka is poised to strike South Florida like a tsunami, much like the early days of crack cocaine.

Local leaders — from members of the clergy, to elected officials, to law enforcement leaders — are fortunately focused on the growing magnitude of the problem. But, Broward needs a bigger boat.

That help should start with the federal government. The U.S. has a two-year ban on flakka, which is manufactured in China and sold via websites, some of which even offer free samples. The ban should be made permanent.

In the meantime, first-responders, hospital staff and school officials need special training to deal with those who get high on this drug. Cops will tell you, it can take up to eight officers to subdue a person freaked out on flakka.

In Palm Beach County, 11 deaths have been attributed to flakka in the past two years. But in Broward County, flakka has contributed to 16 deaths in the seven months between September 2014 and April 2015. That number has more than doubled in the past three months. The Broward Sheriff's Office reports flakka arrests are up 45 percent this year, compared with all of 2014.

"$5 Insanity" is what one user called it, after being arrested by the Broward Sheriff's Office, because of its low cost and ease of availability.

"We're in a state of emergency," Rev. Rosalind Osgood, a Broward School Board member and minister at Fort Lauderdale's New Mount Olive Baptist Church, told the Sun Sentinel.

"It's worse than Ebola — this is bioterrorism," added Dr. Nabil El Sanadi, CEO of the North Broward Hospital District. As director of emergency services, El Sanadi has seen first-hand how flakka can numb someone to the pain of a shoulder popping out of its socket. Amazingly, North Broward sees up to 20 flakka-related cases per day.

While flakka can initially make people feel euphoric, it also can lead to paranoia, delirium and aggression.

One flakka user tried to kick in a glass door at the Fort Lauderdale police station. Another impaled himself atop a security fence at a police station. Both were fleeing drug-induced monsters.

Flakka also is blamed for an incident in Lake Worth in which a user stripped naked, climbed a roof and waived his gun in the air while threatening suicide. And recently in Boynton Beach, a mother got high and left her 1-year-old baby behind in public.

• Osgood and others have launched the "God Squad," which is flooding social media with an anti-flakka message, working with police to create training sessions and knocking on neighborhood doors to warn residents about the new scourge. This month, the grass-roots squad hosted an anti-flakka prayer vigil that drew 50 local leaders from medical, law enforcement and religious communities.

• On its website, Broward Health offers a three-minute video that depicts flakka's effect on the body.

• A group made up of the Broward mayor, sheriff, chief medical examiner and others have convened to draft a battle plan. The early blueprint calls for, among other things, flooding public schools with information about the dangers of this new drug, cross-training for law-enforcement and medical providers, and outreach to the homeless, who have been disproportionately affected.